Wednesday, 28 September 2016

The Perfect Balance

*Sponsored Post

Clinique has just added a new hero formula to their foundation offering. It comes in the form of 'Superbalanced', claiming to be the perfect solution for combination skin... reducing oil where needed while increasing moisturisation to the dry areas at the same time. It's oil free with SPF 15 and sounds too good to be true, right? I've been road testing it for the past to weeks and I'm happy to confirm it's not.

This foundation offers the perfect solution for those of you who can't quite decide what they want and need when it comes to a base. If you flit between a light matte finish, and a more dewy natural-looking one, while at the same time suffering dry patches if you use the former and feel overly shiny if you do the latter, this foundation has got you covered (literally!) I've noticed that in the past few years, my skin has increasingly erred towards to the side of combination. I'm not sure if it's just age, maybe stress or simply down to being busier and out of the house for longer periods of time without the chance to touchup my makeup, but I tend to get a really oily chin and forehead now, while my nose and cheeks remain quite dry and this foundation has really been working for me. I've also been putting it to the test during NYFW, which is probably the hardest test of how makeup wears as I've generally been on the go for at least 12 hours at a time and the heat and humidity in New York is especially hard on your makeup!

The coverage is a solid medium, but very build-able, so you can use it to create a totally flawless finish if you want to, or keep it light and fresh for the daytime. It's super smooth to apply, having a silky, slippy feel to it (it's apparently formulated with actual silk!) that blends almost immediately into the skin, leaving you with a very light-matte finish that looks incredibly natural.

The wear time is really nice too, as it's balancing out oils and moisturising dry areas, it's much longer before I start to notice a shiny T-zone, or any dryness around my nose and cheeks. Another little shout out also has to go to the gorgeous Foundation Buff Brush that I've been using to apply it too... this perfect little densely-packed dome brush has become my go-to pick for applying liquid foundation over the past month and it works perfectly with this formulation (and most others!) It's just dense enough to give you perfect coverage, but light enough to leave you with that airbrushed finish. If you're on the hunt for a new foundation brush I would definitely recommend checking this one out.

Clinique Superbalanced Foundation is available now on Clinique counters everywhere. It's £23 for 30ml and available in 20 shades. The Buff Brush is £28.

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